Wyton, June 2020

We have been aware of the occasional sighting of this charismatic mammal in the Great Ouse Valley but do not yet have a body of evidence of their numbers and locations. Nationally we know that Otters are making a welcome comeback from previous persecution (we know that they were hunted locally not that many years ago), and that most counties now report them, even from city centres, Bristol and Sheffield for example. Here, we know that Great Paxton Pits has had an occupied Otter holt, and boaters sometimes report sightings in the St Ives area. We would love to gather more information and so if you have records, do please be in touch.

In the meantime, I am delighted to report that we have been approached by Eamonn Lillis of Wyton who has had a couple of exciting otter encounters to add to our Sights and Sounds in the Great Ouse Valley. His notes are as follows.

I was house/dog minding for a friend one weekend when early one wet Saturday morning last year I walked the dog along a cut that was fed by the river. I spotted a cloudy mud trail on the bottom of the cut. The water is quite shallow there. Looking ahead I saw that it was being made by a young otter who was swimming towards the river. Luckily the dog had raced ahead and remained blissfully ignorant of the otter, while it remained blissfully ignorant of me. Eventually it glanced over its shoulder and saw me with a brolly right behind it. It then jumped out of the water, ran across the grass and entered the river. Concealing itself in some undergrowth it ‘hissed’ it’s annoyance at my disturbance of its morning perambulation. The dog returned and we left the otter to its business, my only regret being that I had not brought along my phone to get a couple of snaps.

I subsequently photographed the otters on the north bank between Hartford Marina and Houghton Mill. I’m happy for people to know as they have already been spotted by several locals. I set up a camera trap by the riverbank in a small inlet where I had a very close encounter with a young otter last year. Some of the shots are infrared but I did manage to get a few daylight shots on another occasion. All the shots are time and date stamped. I’ve reset the camera now to try to capture video footage as well (fingers crossed). Otters don’t keep very social hours so the camera trap is probably the best method of observing them at present. It's great to see that such apex predators are active and thriving in the area.

Otters 1 Otter 2

 
Otter 3

Note the time of day in each case. Eamonn says otters don’t keep very social hours – he’s right!

All photographs by Eamonn Lillis

Eamon Ellis

Very well done Eamonn and we are all looking forward to hearing more stories of your encounters and your video footage in due course. Please keep us posted.

SEE MORE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS HERE